Newsweek wants you know that having children will make you miserable. The article “Does Having Children Make You Happy? False.” cites survey after survey, poll after poll to establish the premise that children lead to “lower levels of emotional well-being” and “less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions”. The author, Lorraine Ali, begins with a story from her childhood about the couple down the street who were childless by choice:
Each time I visited the Sloans, I’d search for signs of insanity, misery or even regret in their superclean home, yet I never seemed to find any. From what I could tell, the Sloans were happy, maybe even happier than my parents, despite the fact that they were (whisper) childless.
Surveys are then cited to prove that the childless couples are well adjusted and “happy” while those with children.
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term “bundle of joy” may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. “Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,” says Florida State University’s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who’s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. “In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.”
Ali then tells this that this was not always the case. Back in the dark ages having children was a good thing because they could work the farm, but in this day and age they merely cause lack of sleep and the dreaded dissatisfaction.
What Newsweek doesn’t say in its analysis is that we are having fewer children than ever before. In some European countries, the birth rates are at half replacement rates. So never before has a society been less generous toward children while at the same time uniquely unhappy with the few children that we have. Do the math, lack of generosity toward the gift of fecundity equates with lack of happiness with the occasional use of that gift.
“Happiness” and “satisfaction” are subjective terms that are geared toward exalting the narcissistic. Newsweek misses the mark when analyzing the data. The conclusion that I reach from observing this lack of generosity and subsequent morose navel gazing is that we are one of the most self centered and selfish generations to ever walk the planet. Have some children and stop worrying about yourself, then you may realize that it is not all about you. Then maybe, just maybe, you might really be happy.
July 19, 2008 at 5:34 pm
The new, childless, metrosexual modern man:
WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich,—yes, richer than a king,—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
–Edwin Arlington Robinson
I am a parent of two twenty-something kids…both of whom I raised alone from infancy.
July 19, 2008 at 5:55 pm
It is almost insidious, the blindness they have towards what is needed to continue the human race. And kids are amazing, I am always impressed by the mystery of new life, new souls, that children are. This is a new person that has come into the world, absolutely amazing.
And of course to be happily childless, you have to be having sex as well, lest this article leave open the possibility that a celibate lifestyle can have some fulfillment.
July 19, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Is it any wonder more and more kids are killing themselves these days?
God Bless,
Ryan
July 19, 2008 at 7:18 pm
As a parent, I can say that yes, raising children is a challenge, it can be a source of worry and sadness at times, but these challenges make us grow and the joys are much more profound. I wouldn’t trade the ups and downs of parenthood for the more shallow life I had pre-kids, not in a million years.
July 19, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Yes, personal happiness and immediate gratification that is what it is all about.
July 20, 2008 at 11:51 am
I don’t think the parenting surveys were given to any couples who are facing infertility. And, if it was given mainly to couples who can rationalize equating the joy of tasting mixed alcoholic beverages with the joy of seeing your baby’s first smile, the surveys weren’t given to people who really understand the meaning of true happiness.
July 20, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Having children only makes you miserable if you view them as products or commodities to be created and destroyed at your whim.
I see my child as a gift, as will I see any future children we’re blessed with. He makes me unbelievably happy because I realize life isn’t all about me. It’s about doing what’s right by my children and following the teachings of Christ.
July 20, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Having only 1-3 children is HARD. Every time you add one more, though, it gets easier and easier.
Couple this truth with the fact our society exerts a high level of pressure on parents NOT to give children any form of discipline so that the few children you do have simply poke you all day with a sharp stick, and grow up as miserable human beings.
No wonder childless couples are happier in our society!
Kate
July 20, 2008 at 7:55 pm
fr. erik, stole my thunder!
it’s all about being HAPPY…whatever the heck that means.
July 22, 2008 at 4:08 am
Great poem to cite, Mr. Hetman; we were studying it last semester in college. Mammon is definitely not the key to happiness.
July 22, 2008 at 9:35 am
This was a fantastic article, albeit depressing in its own right. On a side note, I think the author meant to write “navel” rather than “naval,” which of course is maritime and relates to ships.
November 14, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Hmm. Nobody seems to have really faced the existential mystery: you have kids, people assume this makes you happy, but managing them is so hard that daily moment-to-moment joy feels sacrificed to admittedly larger issues: the safety of the innocent, the instruction of the rude, the reform of natural savagery, and, finally, simply being heard and serving food. Sure sacrifice of this nature is wonderful, has much to recommend it, an end in itself, as my Catholic tutelage tells me, but it doesn’t really put a smile on your face for the whole human race.
The corollary that the Newsweek writer has missed is that childless couples do not maintain their relative happiness as they age, that despite our alienation from our agricultural roots, children still serve to anchor us to the living, to life itself, and in practical terms, they come by when we’re old to bring the kids and cheer us up and check to see that we have enough soup. Other studies show that this literally adds years to life, and a sort of lateblooming sense of satisfaction.
February 5, 2009 at 3:33 am
Just what the world needs… more people.
I view bringing children into a society that is already bursting at the seems as a selfish act, but understandably so.
For those that have no control over their animal instincts literally have no choice in the matter.